His lips parched by thirst, his skin burning under the scorching sun, or maybe both, woke him up in the boat. Is that storm gone? It is. his rowing partner answered quietly, without turning to look at him. To hell with this blooming whirling crap, I thought it'll send us to the other side when I saw that whirlpool trying to eat us. The other side? Nah, we ain't that lucky, fate's irony. Blinded by the sun, he couldn't see the blood splashing on his hands. To get to the other side, it'd mean going back to life.
(Translated by Ioana Busuioc / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In February 2023, the group has 10,500 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
